The present invention relates to a cigarette holder and particularly to a cigarette holder provided with improved self-contained means for retrieving and replacing filtering material.
Cigarette holders are commonly manufactured to include some kind of filtering device to remove a portion of the tar and nicotine before it reaches the smoker. Some holders are designed to be discarded after a period of use and others are adapted to receive replaceable filtering elements comprising either loose cotton or replaceable factory-made filtering elements. Unfortunately, discardable holders can represent an inordinate expense, and similarly, replaceable manufactured filter elements may also be undesired from the standpoint of cost. Quite satisfactory filtering can be accomplished with readily available absorbent cotton, but removal and replacement of used cotton wadding from a cigarette holder is frequently inconvenient and untidy. While mechanisms have been proposed heretofore for removing or ejecting filtering material, they pertain mainly to factory-made filtering elements which can be removed or ejected as a unit. Moreover, no means is provided for inserting loose cotton material into the cigarette holder as a replacement filtering medium.